Albert Camus(French Philosopher)

Date of Birth:

November 7, 1913

Date of Death:

January 4, 1960

Nationality:

French

Quote count:

208

Times favorited:

972

Albert Camus was a French-Algerian author, philosopher, and journalist who won the Nobel prize in 1957. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus refused this label. On the other hand, as he wrote in his essay The Rebel, his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism. On the subject of his belief or not in God, he writes in the third volume of his notebooks: "I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist."

In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons in the Revolutionary Union Movement, according to the book Albert Camus, une vie by Olivier Todd, a group opposed to the atheist and communistic tendencies of the surrealistic movement of André Breton. Camus was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award, in 1957. He is also the shortest-lived of any literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident only three years after receiving the award.